Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/442

422 the summer. He had also published a “little additional discourse. . . of the name Heathen,” treating of these natives of New England “and that great point of their conversion.” Of this latter work no copy was known to be in existence until one was discovered last year. Baylie quotes from it the following sentences: —

He says, “God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes to gain their tongue.” Baylie exempts from his censure Williams alone, who “in the time of his banishment did essay what could be done with those desolate souls.” It is possible that the publication of Williams's Key, with the interest which it awakened in England, may have prompted the action of the General Court of Massachusetts in some further enactments for the Indians. At the Court in March, 1644, some of the sachems, with their subjects, had been induced to come under a covenant of voluntary subjection to the Government, and into an agreement to worship the God of the English, to observe the commandments, and to allow their children to learn to read the Bible, etc. An order of the Court in the November following provided that the county courts should care for the civilization of the Indians and for their instruction in the knowledge and worship of God. Again, in October, 1645, the Court desired